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SabayonLinux 3.3 Mini on that HP Laptop

Given the growing popularity of SabayonLinux, my continued bad luck with it1, and the fact that my dvdburner died this past weekend, I decided to test the newly released Sabayon Linux 3.3 Mini. Normally one thinks of a mini as a 200 MB or so iso, but in Sabayon's case, it means a regular cdrom-sized image. So, did our tuxmachine0 have any better luck with the newest release from Sabayon this time?

This iso boots to a modified (from regular Sabayon) boot screen. This one contains options to boot the livecd, text & gui installs, and anonymous web browsing amongst some others such safe-graphics and memtest. As usual Sabayon has a uniquely attractive appearance and it starts at boot, continues thru booting, and onto the desktop. The color scheme found throughout features a dark gray to blackish foundation colors with reddish/maroon accents. It's impressive that the theme runs through most of the applications founds such as K3b and Amarok.

I first sampled the aixgl desktop because the little information blurb said it offered better performance. But it showed the same "black window" bug that I found in the latest SimplyMepis. It wasn't as bad as I could see contents in the first window opened, but any subsequent windows would render in only black. On the harddrive install this condition remained, but XGL worked really well, including the Beryl theme manager.

The included and auto-loaded bcm43xx tried to work with my wireless chipset. It could bring the connection up to a point. It could scan for access points, but it wouldn't connect. I was able to use ndiswrapper with my windows drivers and achieve a connection. I complained about the buggy Network Manager on Sayabon Linux my last test, but it seems to be functioning well this release.

The mini version of Sabayon seems a bit limited in the area of applications. I assume it takes quite a bit of room to include support for all the 3D desktops and associated applications. The site states Sabayon is compatible with Gentoo's portage repositories, so one can customize their install to suite their needs. I tested Kuroo, the kde front-end for portage, but I found it to be either misconfigured or inoperable. I was under the impression development had stopped on this app quite a while ago, but perhaps I'm wrong. However, emerge at the commandline works well. I've installed several things so far and haven't had any problems yet.

Some of the included apps are: Kpdf, Kb3, Amarok, Codeine, Thunderbird, Konversation, Bluetooth apps, and wpa_gui. Sabayon Mini also comes with Fluxbox, which is customized to provide consistency. It features the sabayon wallpaper and a reddish-burgundy theme. The fluxbox menu seems to be a hold over from the full-featured Sabayon as none of the applications listed are actually present.

Removeable media handling is excellent. Insert a cdrom/dvd or usb stick and a kde dialog box opens asking what should be done. An icon appears in the lower panel with various options.

I wasn't able to get my printer working as the system is delivered. Truth is, as of this writing, I'm still hammering out the issues. The errors are seen on the gentoo forum, so I'm not sure the fault lies with Sabayon developers. I didn't have these issues with my other Gentoo boxes, but that means very little. So, to be fair, let's err on the subject's side and blame this on an upstream gentoo issue.

My sound worked automagically in both the livecd environment and hard drive install. The touchpad works as it should.

Battery management and monitoring is handled by powersave by default. This works really well and is my favorite method for a kde desktop. Suspend to ram worked well either invoked manually, by a set timeout, or by closing the lid (as set by default). However, suspend to disk couldn't seem to wake up here. The cpufreq worked as it should for saving power.

Overall, either this release or this version of this release of Sabayon Linux is very much improved. I've had my issues with this distro in the past1, but this time things were stable, operative, and non-destructive. Sabayon has always looked good and that hasn't changed. This mini would be a great foundation for those wishing to customize a gentoo system to their tastes without having to start from scratch while having the pleasure of using the customized Sabayon artwork. One of the most desired and still the hardest component to set up, XGL/Beryl desktop, is already included and working. I think the mini is a great choice. But if you are wanting a full-featured system that doesn't require a lot of extra emerging, then perhaps you should test the full sized SabayonLinux. I think after all this time I can finally give SabayonLinux a thumbs-up. :up:

Submitted by Deathspawner on Wednesday 28th of March 2007 03:25:17 AM.

Good review Susan, I enjoyed it. It's great to see that it's working a little bit better for you this time around. I too had the exact same problem with AIXGL so I disabled it quick. I have to say that this version of Sabayon proved to have amazing hardware detection during my tests. I ran it on a new ASUS A8JS laptop and it setup everything perfectly... it all worked right after the boot. Surprisingly, even the wired NIC port didn't function with the Gentoo Live CD, so I was impressed to see it fully supported with SL.

This is one distro that keeps getting better, but my main gripe is something a lot of people love: The insane amount of pre-installed packages (close to 2,000 on the full edition). Did you happen to check to see how many packages were installed with the mini-edition? As crappy as Kuroo is, I checked using it since it was easy to do.

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Hi all,
I just looked back on the Halloween Documents, specifically
http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/halloween1.html . Here are two quotes
I find both interesting and timely:
* Linux can win as long as services / protocols are commodities.
* OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server
applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized,
simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new
protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market.
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